Earlier this year, the ICCSD School Board made the decision to move sixth grade from elementary to junior high. Several areas in Iowa, like Clear Creek Amana and Solon, are already using this middle school model.

This will come into effect in the fall of 2024. This will add about 400 students to the classrooms and will cost the district $34 million dollars in construction costs, as more classrooms will need to be built to accommodate these new students, although the construction plans have not been finalized yet.

“An addition will be made to Northwest to house the increased number of students.  This will likely include around 20 classrooms, an office area, and a larger cafeteria.  Some other improvements may also be needed around the building to support the number of staff and students here,” said Elizabeth Bruening, Principal at Northwest.

This decision was brought up by the ICCSD superintendent during a school board meeting.

“I am in favor of this change and recommended it to the Board. I am in favor of it because of the new opportunities and benefits it will bring to our students,” said Matt Degner, Superintendent. 

One reason for this change is to create more space in elementary schools for preschool education.

“We see benefits for the students in this transition.  We believe that this will benefit students academically and socially.  We also are looking to add more early childhood education opportunities (PK) for our youngest learners. This will allow us to do so at our elementary sites,” said Degner.

The addition of preschool to the elementary school buildings will help parents and students in our district and will help kids in our community to get a head start on their education.

“I want to reach kids as young as possible. You know, I want kids to get the early access that they need. You can definitely see when kids have had preschool and when they haven’t, and it’s really beneficial for kids, especially learning early language skills and early reading skills and just socialization skills that are so important,” said  Kristin Cannon, Principal at Horn Elementary.

In addition to preparing younger children for kindergarten, this change could also help the sixth graders who will be moving on to junior high.

“Overall, I think this will be a good change for our district and for our students. 6th graders are usually pretty down with the elementary setting and are ready for a new challenge.  This would allow for this new challenge while still maintaining some of the structure of the elementary,” said Travis Craig, American Studies teacher at North West Junior High, who previously taught 6th grade.

When students graduate elementary school and move on to junior high, they have more opportunities to join extracurricular activities, participate in sports, and meet new people. But the change in grades might also come with other structural changes to Northwest and the other junior high schools in our district.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to take on a traditional Junior High model, where you have seven periods and you go to all these different classes. There are different ways to make it not so overwhelming and a smoother transition looking maybe more like elementary… There are ways that I know the district is working on an organizational team to meet and kind of talk about what that model will look like. And they’re asking for sixth-grade teachers and they’re asking for high school teachers and junior high teachers and administrators to all sit on that to decide what it’s going to look like,” said Cannon.

Possible changes to the schedules and other aspects of the junior highs in the district will shift the school to run more similarly to an elementary school than a junior high, in order to ease the transition for the incoming sixth-grade students.

“It will be a major shift in the experience because a middle school model is different from a traditional junior high.  Rather than a traditional 7-8 period day, students are often in teams and work closely with those teachers.  The middle school mindset provides a lot of age-appropriate social-emotional support for students which helps prepare them for high school,” said Bruening.